The street of guilds

In a time when candles offered the only means of illumination, when texts only could be reproduced by typesetting each and every letter, punctuation mark and space character manually on handmade paper, when each coin had to be stamped with much effort, when the weaving of fabrics was a long and complex matter, and each piece of jewellery and metal artefact had to be produced separately, the guilds of candle makers, letterpress printers, paper makers, coiners, weavers and goldsmiths (and many more) played a vital role in the everyday life of the people. For us today, the street of guilds demonstrates historical ways of production long since lost, inviting those who are interested to try out for themselves the minting machine, the wood frames for papermaking or the historical letterpress printing machine.